When human beings who are bleeding out in Emergency Rooms are forced to prove they’re U.S. citizens before being treated, everyone understands this is wrong, along with what women have been enduring while miscarrying and suffering ectopic pregnancies in parking lots because of extremist policies.
This is why the US government is shut down, because some politicians don’t want human beings from another country to receive emergency medical care, something any moral society should consider basic decency.
Didn’t Jesus Christ say something about this? The Bible quotes him in Matthew 25: “I was sick and you visited me… I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” And in the parable of the Good Samaritan, he made it clear that the person who shows mercy — not the one quoting scripture — is the true neighbor. Anyone who supports this cruelty isn’t “pro-life.” They’re morally bankrupt.
Showdown in Emergency Rooms
As the federal government remains shut down, the latest standoff in Washington has taken a grim turn, centering on whether hospitals should be required to verify a patient’s citizenship before providing emergency medical treatment.
Republican lawmakers have blocked a bipartisan funding deal over objections to provisions allowing undocumented immigrants to receive emergency care, a service hospitals are required to provide under federal law. The dispute has left essential health programs in limbo and raised alarms among medical professionals, faith leaders, and human rights advocates.
Critics say the policy echoes the same kind of “extremist control” that has already led women in several states to miscarry or suffer ectopic pregnancies without treatment, after abortion bans forced doctors to delay or deny care.
This is the natural extension of the cruelty we’ve already seen. When you make compassion conditional on paperwork, you’re no longer protecting life; you’re politicizing it.
Faith leaders have also weighed in. Citing the Gospel of Matthew. While many note that scripture emphasizes mercy over exclusion, the parable of the Good Samaritan reinforces that showing compassion to strangers is a moral, not political, duty.
If hospitals are forced to screen for citizenship before treating patients, the policy could have deadly consequences for everyone everywhere, blue states, and red ones. Bleeding to death has political consequences.